Farting through my Fingertips

Pretty major weekend. Much on, locally. And me with cash in my pocket* and some serious steam to blow off. Dangerous combination.

* for the first time in *wince*

Add in taking Monday off due to a deliberately arranged lack of imminent work, and a lot of lack of motivation, followed by a third afternoon and late evening in the sun sinking real ale and laughing with (similarly enfeebled) friends.

Only really started to clear the hangover today...

Part of that Much On was a food festival surrounding a live music festival. The house tonight is filled with the scent of locally shot wild muntjac roasting slowly. slathered in locally grown and coldpressed virgin rape oil (heh) infused with garlic and lemongrass, topped with lashings of thyme, tarragon, and turmeric, basted in red wine and more rape with garlic and lemongrass. The sheer DIFFERENCE in quality between local and supermarket versions of same has to be tasted to be believed. "Canola Oil" tastes like sawdust compared to the real stuff. You could DRINK this. There's a late-added pot of "greens" (their actual veggie name), kale, courgettes, and cauliflower (hey, weird, another assonance), basted in the meat's juices, just starting to add their piquant smell too.

All of this cost perhaps #25-30. And there's enough to feed me for another 3-4 days.

I bought all that, and a lot more (the local-enthusiasts-grown vintage tomatoes and mushrooms alone have had me pause at my opened fridge, inhaling, for 5 minutes at a time, and i have a gallon of unpasteurised jersey milk from a farm just up the road) at the local farmers market Sunday, but I hit the shops up in London --HARD-- on Saturday. I took some amazing photos on one new (and frankly rather amazing) toy that night at the outdoor concert. I'm typing this now on another that awaits some seriously life-improving hackery. And I now have a pair of trousers without age-failed rips.

We're talking some SERIOUS micro moments of sheer joy.

I did unfortunately miss by 2 weeks one absolute treasure and perfection that I'd been ogling for over a year now. Of ALL the times to sell it finally!! O the anguish. And on my birthday, too. But even that is one day recoverable, so rue briefly but move gaily on. It actually adds a bit of poignant joy to the day -- something keenly desired, and lost, but known to come again, so merely a teeth-sharpening tingle of anticipation and more-ness.

Life is good. And it promises to get better.

, that was right up there.

My attempted uber-maddened fix of an ongoingly and exponentially increasing and maddening sloppiness of the power cable (intermittently...) running into the back of this laptop, the only i-access i have until i test the cleaned-out&sun-dryedness of my buggered keyboard of my key machine, had an unexpected consequence: the loctite used to try to stop the pointlessly interchangeably parts flopping apart every 2 seconds got pushed into the electric connections when i pushed the plug together. Much closer physical fit that it appeared, it appears...
And even after keen scrapings, there's still no current coming through.
Running on un-topupable battery at the moment.

So I could disappear e-ly for an indefinite time imminently...

the payment that should have hit the account on friday (hence my happily profligate spending of cash-in-pocket on friday until the gut-sinking bowel-chilling moment on saturday when the balance-check said: overdraft exceeded), has now ACTUALLY been made (flowered with arse-covering excuses by the (pseudo)admin-girl pretending she was confused by the apparent double payment and concerned about twice as much hitting my account, then actually went and fucking DID what she'd SAID she'd done on friday, the day I'd discovered she'd been sitting on this chunk of my cash for over 2 months...)

and now i'm pseudo-flush. i'll hit overdraft again on monday when the rent goes through but its limit is deep enough and fat enough to tide me over for another 2-3 months of (relatively) high lifestyle, and there's another tumtytumlargesum or three in-train (and several months overdue...) which will certainly be paid over by then (September). the result of over a year's work, and enough to live on for another year, comfortably.

my life just changed.

my life just changed.

this is the inflection-point of the last 5 years of nightmare, of the best, most-productive, years of my life spunked in suicidal desperation, of looking forward and KNOWING that unless something magic happened i'd die on the street 30 years early. and now i'm looking at finally Realising the possibility that a random chance handed me 18mths ago. there's an upside. and it's NOW.

my life just changed.

Due to yet another delayed payment (this time, I subsequently discovered, entirely due to yet another error by the (pseudo)admin girl -- she PROMISED me it was all dealt with and paid out in full Friday), I have £7 cash to last me... well, I didn't know how long. Possibly a month. Seriously. Just no idea. I'm past overdraft limit. Watching agonisedly my bank balance go UP the last few days as various direct debits are reversed out by the bank. To the inescapable detriment of whatever remains of my credit rating. At least this time if the lights go out, it's warm.

Supermarket. I'm so hungry I'm chewing my teeth. Like it or not, I need food.

I have stuff left in the freezer, but it's just meat (thank god for the supercheap countryside farmersmarket). Pure-meat only works if you've been eating GOOD stuff for a long while (NOT fillet: think venison or roo or australian beef) and/or if you've been eating a lot of veg previously and/or you can afford to let your brain drop for a while (granted that being a vegetarian makes this happen VASTLY faster and more profoundly (I've tried it... (morally, I would VASTLY prefer to be a vegetarian)))
Fridge-remainders veg-wise are only 1 onion, 1.5 garlic bulbs, a head of near-rotting broccoli, and a chunk of aussie-prepped lettuce (so it'll last another few weeks). Also: the last pack of 3-for-£3 lunch meat, a month and a half out of date but packed in nitrogen, and I've regrettably (in larger context) learned to trust my metabolism to cope with much worse. And some cheese. The fungus spots on it just means it's now posh cheese, right?

I'm not counting 2 carrots that snap at me each time I go to throw them out.

I need stuff that'll get me through the next week at least halfway capable of the level of work I still need to do. What happens after that... I'll just have to deal with after that.

A litre of milk. Some tomatoes. Bread, bread would be good. Starch. Or rather, sugar. Fills you up at lunchtime. And at bedtime. But the only loaves left are the good ones. Nearly a quarter of my total cash. I turn, vaguely, distressedly, and in doing so out of the corner of my eye catch the yellow tags of "out-of-date sale!" on the bank of rubbish pseudo breadrolls. And a number catches me, and I look again, more closely.

5p a roll?

I look.

It is. It is. 5p a roll. And sure they're going to be (remaining) teeth cracking stuff. But.
5p a roll.

20p for several days' worth of appetite-staving.

I grab 4 of the least unlikely-looking rolls and head for the checkout, counting out the coins in my pocket.

The painfully cute sparky button-nose girl drags me out for separate sale, and I'm counting out coins embarrassedly and I suddenly realise I must be eating worse than I thought: I'd tallied up £2.98 as I'd been walking around, and she asked me for £2.80.

It's only when I'm home and, about to toss it, think to check the receipt, that I discover what had happened.

The rolls had a pre-standing "temporary offer" of "4 for £1.10". And the receipt automatically showed a discount of £0.18 as a result.

I got each roll for (20p - 18p)/4 = 0.5p each.

I scarfed two last night in a frenzy of hunger, secure in the knowledge I can do the same just before closing time any day this week.

minor note for anyone wondering why i haven't answered any emails recently on my non-full accounts (eg saltation...)

my keyboard has spent a few days drying in the sun after a spillage plus rinsage incident. will start to feel safe re re-connectage tomorrow or day after.

Evening over. Over-clingy girl shaken off. But I really do want to see the outcome of the awesome heavyweight (and how!) bout tonight with Nicolai Valuev (7 foot tall and 300lbs). I bounce one pub, I circle and bounce the second pub -- no joy with either's big-screen on this saturday night, both "sport" pubs pounding with live music. And it's past the end of the televising and I've given up and had another pint in another pub with some mates and I'm walking home across the wide carpark and I see a lone chap, a kid, perhaps 17-19, walking home alone the other way.
And as I pass him, a little group of 17yos --full-grown yet young but sadly/scarily a team of thugs-- walking my way but 100ft across the tarmac away bail him up with abuse.
They're looking for a fight, there's 5 of them and 1 of him, and he's IT.

Not appropriate. And I'm quite comfortable that I could take them and win without breaking a sweat. And by god I want a legal excuse.
I OBJECT to people taking physical advantage of other people by sheer social weight. And I'm in a position to correct the imbalance.

But the risk, of course, is the non-fighting part -- the social allowance of someone sidling up behind you and rabbit-punching as things kick off. (assuming no knives) (my best friend was stabbed this way, deceitfully, but he was facing asians in london and here i'm facing modern-english in england. so i'm expecting the same attitude but without knives.)

Borne in mind.

I stop, and observe. This is England after all: land of the posturing; it could all immediately fizzle out with no harm. Alas no. He reacts and they're all over him, gathering round and shouting.

It's ON.


I walk back and walk silently passive-aggressively INTO them, bumping one hard out of the way and bumping one from behind, who steps aside. They're social-alarmed and turning and looking at me and wondering how to adjust their behaviour, and the rest of the group are pretending to be focussed on him but actually looking at me too. There's one little guy, the shortest in the group, having it large in the innocent's face.
And: good on him, the innocent attackee: he's angry and he's telling them to fuck off. Angrily and loudly, and validly. Audibly filled with fear but still having a go. Good on him.
And he was in deep shit a minute ago but now the aggro group are all trying to ignore the old guy who's just walked into the middle of them and has barged a couple of them casually out of the way and is standing aggressively and aggro-ly but weirdly (scarily) silently in the middle of them when he SHOULD be acting afraid or shouting stuff. And all he's doing now is staring hard at the guy making the most noise. Like he's not remotely afraid of the people surrounding him and is considering what to do with the guy he's staring at. Which I was. And the noise is jacking up but has collapsed to just the one guy, and the actual risk has dropped dramatically.

Aggro boy's not seeing anything but The Victim in front of him, but he's feeling the sudden lack of Support from the guys around him and he starts to trail off. A mate of the victim runs up and in and starts to trying to calm things down. This unfortunately only makes things worse -- aggro boy kicks off again near-psycho. I'm going to ENJOY taking him out if he takes it physical. (Please god, take it physical.)
One of his mates starts to kick off in consequence, and I turn and Look at him. He Folds. I turn back to the aggro boy and continue to observe. Visibly. Very Obviously. Arms demonstrably clear and expression extremely sour. Body language screaming extreme lack of fear and extreme willingness to sort things out. The mini-mob around me Folds.

And he feebles when there's no support from the guys around him, all looking at me out of the corner of their eye. And it turns into empty shouting. And it starts to wind down.
To the point of nothingness.

I'm both short-mindedly infuriated (I WANTED them to learn the hard way) and long-mindedly relaxed (once the Legal aspects of Assault vs Defence come into play, everything turns into a tedious nightmare of trivial yet extensive garbage, where even the most trivial admin error could turn into a destruction of your whole future life)

I'm not needed. I turn and walk away. Job done.

About 20 yards later, the tone behind me changes. The guy's at risk again. I turn, and stand, arms free, and look back. The group is looser now, they've all stepped away, and the aggro boy stands separate, and he's in the face of the attackee. And as I settle, waiting for a clear signal, he turns and looks at me, and he freezes, and he steps back and he quietens down. And it all fizzles out again. And the attackee and his mate get to walk on with only a little more shouting and threatening, all meaningless, and they're away.

I turn and walk home.

As Vanessa said once, after she'd come back from doing what I suggested when I showed her how in a few words to resolve and eliminate a major life-stress with her ex-girlfriend: "you've done a good thing today".
But I would have preferred to teach the lesson physically.
I REALLY would. I REALLY would.

w00t!

discovered on the newly discovered Mild Colonial Boy

From Punch Magazine, 25th April 1934.
(Discovered by Mark T. Mitchell at Front Porch Republic)

I Want to Be a Consumer

“And what do you mean to be?”
The kind old Bishop said
As he took the boy on his ample knee
And patted his curly head.
“We should all of us choose a calling
To help Society’s plan;
Then what do you mean to be, my boy,
When you grow up to be a man?”

“I want to be a Consumer,”
The bright-haired lad replied
As he gazed up into the Bishop’s face
In innocence open-eyed.
“I’ve never had aims of a selfish sort,
For that, as I know, is wrong.
I want to be a consumer, Sir,
And help the world along.

“I want to be a Consumer
And work both night and day,
For that is the thing that’s needed most,
I’ve heard economists say,
I won’t just be a Producer,
Like Bobby and James and John;

I want to be a Consumer, Sir,
And help this nation on.”

“But what do you want to be?”
The Bishop said again,
“For we all of us have to work,” said he,
“As must I think be plain.
Are you thinking of studying medicine
Or taking a Bar exam?”
“Why, no!” the bright-haired lad replied
As he helped himself to jam.

“I want to be a Consumer
And live in a useful way;
For that is the thing that’s needed most,
I’ve heard economists say.
There are too many people working
And too many things are made.
I want to be a Consumer, Sir,
And help to further trade.

“I want to be a Consumer,
And do my duty well;
For that is the thing that’s needed most,
I’ve heard Economists tell.
I’ve made up my mind,” the lad was heard
As he lit a cigar, to say;
“I want to be a Consumer, sir,
And I want to begin today.”

~~Patrick Barrington

Cosmos - Billie Jean - Click here for more free videos

A Chinese proverb I ran across recently, which I wholeheartedly agree with, yet have tweaked for closer consonance to my current feelings:

If your strength is small, don't carry heavy burdens.
If your mind is small, don't give advice shut the fuck up.

I really should cook that mince I've thawed. Have a good feed, have lunch leftovers for the next few days. I could use a good feed. I really should cook that mince I've thawed.

But if I do that, I really should do the dishes. They've been piling up for a fortnight now — I loathe endless chores, my aversion knows no bounds. But I'm out of pots&pans. And bowls. And cutlery. I've still got a plate left. But I really should do the dishes.

But if I do that, I really should scrub the other draining board properly. I'll need that to put the clean dishes on to dry. It's been accumulating dust and kitchen air-grime and tea splashes from the badly designed drippy teapot parked there. Can't put clean dishes on that. I really should scrub the other draining board.

But if I do that, I really should finish cleaning the oil stain out of the t-shirt draped over the sink edge. It's been sitting there after I worked on it for an hour on the weekend. Can't really hang it up to dry while it's still all stainy and toxic-chemical-y. Can't leave it there while I'm doing the dishes. I really should finish cleaning the oil stain out of the t-shirt.

But if I do that, I really should fold up all my laundry sitting on the clothes-horse. I'll need to hang the t-shirt there. The laundry's dry — I did it on Saturday. I really should fold up all my laundry sitting on the clothes-horse.

Which reminds me, I really should put the sheets back in the washing machine to rinse out the soap-remainder that was left on them. Looks like my sex life is far better than it is. And I can't sleep on them with that soap left there — it'll en-rash-enate my skin. Probably. Or something. I really should put the sheets back in the washing machine to rinse.

...

For fuck's sake.

How did dinner turn into a hour+-long chain of preparatory chores, before I can even start to cook? Which... will just reverse the effect of half those chores and open up the inevitable prospect of imminently just having to do them all over again. Again. Again again.

For fuck's sake.

How did a good feed and a week's worth of awesome lunches turn into a dismal dispiriting prospect of unrelated tedium? That will itself not be ended, but merely herald the start of yet another cycle of unrelated tedium?

How did dinner turn into a dismal hassle? I pulled yet another 13hr day today. Hassle is NOT what I need.


I really should.


Maybe I'll just heat up that frozen curry.

2 o'clock. Office filled with carbon dioxide. Girlies all closing windows, and then doors, since 9, to show each other their CONTROL. Or rather their dutiful acknowledgement of female HIERARCHY, expressed as repetition of control. Faces slowly reddening and brains unslowly tanking towards near-imbecility regardless of native intelligence. Even the delicious genius has a brain like haystacks and a face like strawberries.

Me: out.

And Lo! the world expands again, in a moment, as I step outside and slud-thunk the modern slick bulky door behind me, and I turn and fill my nostrils and accidentally my lungs and my head goes back and my back goes straight and the sheer oxygen and then the million streams of nature scent pour into me, pure and clean and fresh. Dripping in country.

I've been hammering uninterrupted for 5 or 6 hours now. I need to clear my head.

And yet I'm startled yet again at just how FAST it clears in this countryside office, compared to just 30 feet that way. In the miasma of only a few —but O! how so very insular— people mumming and mugging at each other just how dedicatedly they're working. Even as it takes them 15mins to answer me the simplest of questions. And yet still getting it wrong. Badly wrong.

Never let girls define your office, if you NEED to make a profit. Their insistence on consonance and form is the most destructive thing you can do for an office. "Harmony", as a goal above all others, is the most toxic concept on earth. And has caused more evil and more misery than any other motivation I've seen yet, including pure savagery. Tiananmen Square and the Holocaust were simple products of the same process.


I'm out now. And the winds are gusting and the clouds are scudding, but it's all fresh, and the world's as big again as it was when I walked into the office so many years ago this morning.

These next 30 minutes are mine. To wander and explore as I will.

"I bumped into this midget the other day.
"Knocked him flying.

"He jumped up, mad as hell, and said 'I'm not happy!!'

"I was flummoxed. I said, 'So which one are ya?!' "

-- Colin Cole (6'7")
(who?)
(show me) (watch that-- a great few minutes)

Now, I know what you're thinking. (Scary, eh?)
You're thinking: "I thought you were dead?"

Pretty much, internet-wise.

That manic period at work that kicked off mid-December and said "60-hour weeks, minimum", suddenly backed off to only 30-intense-hours early-April. After a couple of months of me doing my damndest to back things off -- throwing away new and deliberately winding-down existing, opportunities that everyone else was clamouring for.

Thing to bear in mind: what I'm doing for work now is not like normal work -- it's intensely enervating. I used to pull 60&80hr weeks as a matter of course, but that work gave day-on-day positive feedback and sense of progression. This work doesn't. Quite the opposite. It is INTENSELY draining.
Get home at 9 or 10 and even though you can't bring yourself to open a book or fire up the computer (I no longer have a TV, due to the events of 18mths ago), you'll still be too tired to sleep at 2.

And then while still within the gasping restorative period, it all suddenly kicked off again. Come the Easter 4-day weekend, I really needed to do more work but as Friday dawned bright and beautiful, I just couldn't face it. And woke up about sundown. Same on Saturday. Sunday and Monday, though, were glories that I really should try to post. (For later.)

But that brief glimpse of genuine respite had kicked off the body's native healing mechanism, and all the viruses I'd been accumulating from the sickly, poorly ventilated, constantly re-infecting, English office came roaring up as the body turned to deal with them. You know the deal -- every time you take a holiday after hammering yourself, you lose the first few days to miserable illness.

Well, this was a bit more than miserable. I was still emphysemically hawking up green phlegm 4 weeks later. I lost all that week, and most of the next, either in bed or, in the 2nd week, in a dazed cloud. Capable of simple reactive stuff, but utterly incapable of the proactive stuff that is the essence of the job.

When the cloud started to clear halfway through the 3rd week, I realised I was in deep shit and had to pull my finger out big-time. Cue getting home at 10pm again....

Then, when I thought I'd wound everything down again and had a week of mere momentum-maintenance ahead of me and the chance of thinking about a holiday, the inevitable event I'd been racing to close everything down prior to, so I could rest and recharge so that I could take the bull by the horns when it arrived, happened 1 month earlier than I've been predicting for nearly a year. Shit. Vaguely happy re kudos/vindication re my constantly-howled-down forecasts, but still:
Back into emergency-mode -- I'm up against an Army of Idiots, but an Army nonetheless.

Think I've got it all under control now. Still a lot of work. But less effortful, energy-wise: merely time.

So this is where I am now.


I've been playing on the internet occasionally, in reactive stuff, and that's actually helped me regain energy. The simple resolution of problems. The simple explanation of situations. Lovely energy-light reactiveness.

But not the energy/drive to blog.

Every time I think to blog, I realise that, proaction-wise, I'm scraped dry.

As I am now.

It's an energy thing, a lack of spur. A lack of spur. Up until recently, there simply wasn't anything left that could respond to a spur. The horse had been flogged past its limits. That's changing now. The horse is regaining the sparkle in its eye.
And this post is itself a self-spur. Re-breaking the seal, re-opening the channel of more-casual posts.

On the upside, that screaming rush period, plus the follow-through on some several major works last year, mean that once all the current invoices are paid (HereBe: BOTH those cheques eventuated! And 3 more half their size. But they still haven't been paid), the literally nightmarish scraping penury of the last 6 years will be a thing of the past and I can start to lift my head and look forward once again. I will have choices again.

Just as soon as someone actually PAYS...

Never mind "having a day like this", I keep having "weeks like this".

Got 2 whole weeks of 40hours before it kicked off again. Still desperately winding things down, and theoretically I really should be in a position to start addressing all those long-delayed MAJOR tasks.

And yet.

Today, for example, for some reason, nobody could do a 1-2minute touchbase phonecall in less than 10-15. Had to just hang up on a few people: "sorry mate, I'm sorry but I just don't have time". *click* *ring* "Sal, I heard you hang up -- C's on the line for you." Took me nearly 90minutes to send a critical Set of (just) 4 emails. Interruptions.

A near-guaranteed £11k-revenue opportunity folded up today due to a 3rd party's actions and all I felt was a dull relief.


Ran out of brain and walked out with several big (BIG!) things unstarted. I got home before 8. Which was lovely. But with a brain like custard.

God I need a holiday.

Work dropped back to mere 40 hours-ish last week so am recuperating.

Annoyingly, some stuff I'd hoped to post mid-January as a prescient early "Heads Up!" is now starting to be reported in the Press. But I might still post it anyway. Ditto, I'd better hurry up and try to finish my CreditCrunch 3-parter before it all becomes academic.

Apologies. Busy. Pulling 8-8 most days at the moment, the chores list growing with tasks postponed.

For now, content yourselves with this joyfulness:

6 o'clock and as I cross the empty carpark at the foot of the rise heading home I'm arrested again by my world, for the dozenth time today. The sky's a confection of rose sugar spun across a wash of achingly bright translucent blue. Crisp ex-wintering air stands still but brisk. Coal fires' faint scent zephyrs the nose. Another married pair of rooks swoop and arch their way around each other in the surreally blue porcelain sky above me, croak-gurgling to each other as they loop and soar their cheerful way home from the sunset's daily avian passagiata. Every tree around me is a-bud, catkins forested on and flourished from some's bare boughs, silent banners shouting summer soon.